Official Site

Just 5 weeks to go before my son is born. He has given me so much music and filled my head with imagery. I have a new con­cept for the next album already laid out. Such a gift this one, already. A few writ­ing and record­ing ses­sions are lined up in my 9th month of preg­nancy to give you an idea of the level of cre­ativ­ity and inspi­ra­tion that is brew­ing. I must say singing is not so easy these days nor is bend­ing or lift­ing or many other daily activ­i­ties, but I am really look­ing for­ward to reveal­ing the new mate­r­ial in due time. I’ve been able to stay active phys­i­cally as well. Still doing a 3 mile hike over look­ing Los Ange­les reg­u­larly, swim­ming laps and keep­ing on the preg­gers yoga thanks to Net­flix… I feel great. Thank you every­one out there for the sup­port and love that has kept me at it through this time of great change.

Per­haps a baby is the far­thest thing from your mind but if you feel so inclined to hear about my jour­ney then I invite you to read on. If not, thank you for stop­ping by my site. I thought a warn­ing was fair since there’s talk of birthing from the next para­graph on which isn’t nec­es­sar­ily a topic for every­one. That said, here it goes.

I for one, think it’s a joy­ous thing to share this once in a life­time expe­ri­ence of hav­ing my first­born, my lit­tle man, come into my life. Par­tic­u­larly for other first time moms, because I love hear­ing oth­ers sto­ries. If any­thing I share is of use to you, fan­tas­tic. Oth­er­wise, I have opened up a pri­vate part of my life that feels so beau­ti­ful and inter­est­ing to me sim­ply as a human, that I can’t help but talk about it.

Like my mother before me, I intend to be part of an unbro­ken line of nat­ural births. My grand­mother had eight healthy babies at home, no doc­tor, no nurses, just some expe­ri­enced and know­ing hands. I’m not say­ing just any­one should hun­ker down and have a baby with­out the proper med­ical assis­tance. But at that time, in my moms vil­lage, it was how things had always been. In my mom’s vil­lage in the Philip­pines there was a “gifted woman”, what we would con­sider a mid­wife, that would come to the house once a woman entered active labor. Until that point, my grand­mother had taken it upon her­self to go about reg­u­lar daily activ­i­ties to keep her mind from going toward fear dur­ing con­trac­tions. When the gifted lady arrived she pre­pared the house for my grand­mother, with the help of fam­ily and other women in the vil­lage and attended directly to my grand­moth­ers com­fort and the babies progress through herbal reme­dies and mas­sage dur­ing labor. I imag­ine some of this mas­sage was for relief and some of the mas­sage must have been a type of mon­i­tor­ing, per­haps even posi­tion­ing of the baby while still in the belly for the eas­i­est pas­sage. My mom told me the women would gather around my grand­mother and they would sing. This allowed my grand­mother to find her breath­ing and chan­nel the sen­sa­tions of labor, it pro­vided a release of strain and helped her to “sing the baby down”. When I was born in the hos­pi­tal my mom used this tech­nique, but she knew it would seem strange to every­one around her since she had not heard of this prac­ticed in Amer­ica. Rather than sing out loud, she qui­etly sang in her heart as she brought me into the world.

Inci­den­tally, I grew up in a church where home birth was com­mon. I remem­ber going to my friends house and being shown which room they were born in. A girl­friend of mine also built her house with a large tub for this pur­pose. And with the many gifts my baby has already brought me, I began my preg­nancy under the care of a hos­pi­tal mid­wife staff who sup­port my deci­sion to have my baby at home.

May I intro­duce the gifted women who will attend to my home birth:

Home care and sup­port pro­vided by this Cer­ti­fied Nurse Mid­wife duo.
Amy Tin­ney CPM, LM, RN and
Sarah Shealy RN, MSN, CNM, IBCLC

www.artofnursing.net

Birth train­ing, edu­ca­tion and assis­tance pro­vided by this tal­ented Birth Doula.
Marie-Paul Baxiu C.C.H., C.H.I., R.P., C.R.

www.easybirthing.com

I have received such won­der­ful atten­tion and insight under the care of these women that I had to let oth­ers know. In case there hap­pened to be some­one to come across my site, in need of a great mid­wife or doula! It has been such a bless­ing to have both the hos­pi­tal mid­wife group and these ladies just a phone call away. They have all mon­i­tored my devel­op­ment both in terms of health and well being. Not only have I had preg­nancy care, nutri­tion and exer­cise plans tai­lored to my body’s spe­cific needs and changes, I have had this net­work in place to pre­pare both me and my part­ner men­tally and emo­tion­ally to enter par­ent­hood and start a healthy, happy fam­ily. I am healthy and have had a low risk preg­nancy which made me a can­di­date for home birth. My mid­wives have had a 100% suc­cess rate for home birth but of course I have my back up plan in place at the hos­pita;. The biggest ques­tion I get is “but it’s gonna hurt. how can you pos­si­bly skip the drugs?” That is where Marie-Paul comes in. She had trained me in self hyp­no­sis. I have visu­al­ized, mem­o­rized and exer­cised my mind in a sim­i­lar fash­ion to that of my mom and grandma using singing as a means to over­come fear and access the aware­ness and endurance required for a gen­tle birth. Sci­en­tif­i­cally speak­ing, the chem­i­cals released dur­ing a state of fear, stress and panic inhibit the hor­mones our body would oth­er­wise nat­u­rally release to safely allow a baby to come with a mom being in a com­plete state of focus. I was so excited to read Jes­sica Alba describe her home hypno-birth as “zen”. FIn­gers crossed I’ll have the same feel­ing about mine.